But the ‘Dialogue’ asserts in its next and very remarkable chapter--“A quibus vel ad quid instituta fuerit argenti examinatio”--that this system was first introduced by the famous Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the writer’s great-uncle, after he had sat at the Exchequer for some years, and had discovered the need of introducing it.[140] Between this statement and the evidence of Domesday the contradiction is so absolute that a grave question at once arises as to the value of the writer’s assertions on the early Norman period. Like the men of his time, he revelled in texts, and loved to drag them in on every possible occasion. One is, therefore, only following his example in suggesting that his guiding principle was, “I magnify my office.” The greatness and the privileges of a seat at the Exchequer were ever present in his mind. But to this he added another principle, for which insufficient allowance, perhaps, has hitherto been made. And this was, ‘I magnify my house.’ Nor can one blame the worthy treasurer for dwelling on his family’s achievements and exalting his father and his great-uncle as the true pillars of the Exchequer. He was perfectly justified in doing this; but historians should have been on their guard when he claims for Bishop Roger the introduction of a system which Domesday Book shows us as already in general operation.[141] Enlightened by this discovery, we can more hardily approach a statement by the writer in the same chapter, which has been very widely repeated. One need only mention its acceptance by such specialists as Stapleton, in his work on the Norman Exchequer, and Mr. Hubert Hall, who, in his work on the ‘Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer,’ refers to it four times.[142] He first tells us that for half a century after the Conquest there could have been very little need of a central treasury at all, since the greater part of these provisions formed an intrinsic portion of the revenue itself ... which was still payable in kind. This point is both important and interesting, and has been hitherto somewhat overlooked by economic writers. The fact (which is probable enough in itself) rests on high authority--that of the famous treasurer of the first two Plantagenet kings (p. 4). Again, he writes on p. 161: We have seen that in the earliest times--previously, that is, to the reorganization of the Exchequer under Henry I.--the revenue of the sovereign was answered in two forms, namely, in specie and in kind, the former drawn from judicial fines and farms of towns, and the latter rendered, at an arbitrary assessment, by the cultivators of the royal demensne.[143]